John 12:24-25​Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.

Imagine a seed.

It is small and plain.Ubiquitous.Unremarkable.Easily misplaced, forgotten, squandered, dismissed.

The seed is almost nothing, yet it contains the vast promise of life, folded inside, ready for release.

This seed could be lying in a packet with a hundred other seeds.

Or it could be sitting alone in the corner of a shed.

Now imagine that seed tucked into the earth.

Perhaps not deep in the earth, but the seed is so tiny compared to the volume of the soil around it – all it knows, everywhere, is heavy darkness.

It is still. And quiet. Nothing moves. The weight of the soil presses in around it. It is cool and damp. And somehow the message is received: now.

Tentatively, the seed puts out a root.

The root finds its way down.

Deeper into the earth, into the darkness, into the water of life below.

Jesus said: “...those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. The water I give is like a flowing fountain that gives eternal life.” (John 4:14)

And as the plant discovers its roots can be trusted, it begins, slowly, surely, to send a shoot of growth upwards, towards the surface, towards the light, towards the heavens.

Taking the treasure it needs from the dark, damp, soil, it grows. Up. Out.

Seeking that which it cannot name but must find.

The plant breaks through the soil. Perhaps an angel greets it. Perhaps only the plant knows what has happened, and that is enough to celebrate.

The plant relishes the light, the warmth, the conditions of the environment. There is possibility, space, life.Look at all that life!

The plant knows how to turn light into life. To photosynthesise. To make food. To grow more. To bask and sway and bring colour and texture to its surroundings.

The plant still needs its roots always in darkness. Needs the water that lies below. This remains essential.

The plant will not live like this forever. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted...” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

Joy Cowley has an incredible way of making our stories at once universal and intensely personal. She says she has learnt that life’s hardest moments have been her greatest teachers. ‘Loss and grief have emptied me, and I’ve been filled with something greater and more expansive,’ she reflects. ‘There are no crucifixions without resurrection, and what is resurrected is always greater than had died.’ (From the Salvation Army magazine “War Cry” 2016)

I love her various Easter psalms and prayers and reflections – she seems to be someone who has found Easter truth again and again in her life. She writes in Easterings:

The world is full of Good Fridays and Golgothas.In the small arena of our lives,there appears to be the same defeat of goodnessand its difficult to wear a bright smilewhen the heart hangs heavy in the darknessfull of thorns and nails and swords.Unable to see beyond dyings, we cry,“God, God, why have you forsaken us?”

Easter morning offers a pattern. That life follows death. That gritty hope chips and cracks its way through despair. That God refuses to give evil the last word. This pattern may not conform to our definition of a reasonable timeframe, and this pattern may not bring life to the exact spot we witnessed death, but Jesus offers it with all his soul nevertheless.

And while we must acknowledge that we have not heard what the most vulnerable, marginalised voices have to say about this offering (Syrian children, Rohingya mothers, indentured soldiers); those of us who find ourselves on the Christian path, in the garden with Christ on Easter morning, hold it as our greatest gift.

So imagine a seed.Imagine yourself as a seed.

Are you small and plain, unremarkable?

Do you have a sense of joyous possibility curled up within? Or not?

Are you waiting in the soil? Have you been waiting a long time? Or have you only just arrived in this place? Have you perhaps lost track of time?

Have you begun to unravel? Is your first root reaching down, seeking nourishment from the darkness?

Have you already found what you need in the damp soil? Are you growing up, unsure, determined, surprised, exultant, towards the light?

Is the darkness beneath you nourishing? Or do you need to reach a little further to find what you need? Do you trust God is there, even there?

Have you burst into the air, blinking, disbelieving, relishing the sun and wind and rain and thinking “This, this, this: here I am.”

Is your experience in your own life matched to the Easter season? Are you swaying in the garden of God’s goodness?

Or do you sense a turn, a gentle shift, a sharp jolt; an end. A career, a friendship, a way of thinking, a cherished identity, a loss, a change, a challenge, a sadness.

Do you dare to find your seed self, and believe there is a future contained within?